Report: Bastardo Suspended 50 Games for Part in Biogenesis

The big names we knew; Alex Rodriguez, Ryan Braun, Nelson Cruz. But now, we’re finding out some of the other names, which includes a Philadelphia Phillie.

According to Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports, Antonio Bastardo will serve a 50-game suspension as part of his involvement in the Biogenesis scandal. The 27-year-old lefty was having a solid season, sporting a 2.27 ERA in 48 games. His contract was for $1.4 million this season, but he will not be paid as part of the suspension.

Be honest, does anyone care? If the players truly wanted PEDs out of the game, they would have had a stipulation in the CBA proving as such. But they don’t, so players take the chance of the 50 game suspension. This is basically an unpaid vacation for Bastardo. Hopefully he can figure out a way to pitch well again next season while not on the juice.

Dan Meyer, a former Phillies reliever and New Jersey native, had this to say about a guy who beat him out for a spot in the bullpen a few seasons ago:

Hey Antonio Bastardo, remember when we competed for a job in 2011. Thx alot. #ahole

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41 Comments

Alex M.

August 5, 2013 at 1:28 pm

I think it is a little concerning for the Phils more than Bastardo, if he cannot return to how he was this season the Phillies will have to find a top left reliever. It hurts them a lot more than Bastardo.

I think many will make a joke of this especially since it is a player that it is difficult for the Phillies fans to rally behind…has he even been interviewed? But this is the third player (Chooch and Romero) that has been suspended for PEDs in the past few years. I feel the Phillies management and ownership need to do more on their part to clean up this mess so that it does not embarrass the team any further.

I should qualify that statement by saying that Bastardo totally could still be on steroids. I guess. But he hasn’t failed a recent drug test so we don’t have any more reason to be suspicious of his 2013 results than we do of any other player.

I would argue this is a break. Bastardo doesn’t waste his arm in a meaningless year, his arbitration award is perhaps a bit lower and the Phillies will get to see more young bullpen arms to evaluate their chances for next year.

Plus their draft pick for next year probably just got a little better too!

This may explain why he didn’t trade Papelbon, but it would be a poor explanation. They should not be worried about who closes in the meaningless games before this season ends. They should be worried about who closes – and at what cost – in 2014 and beyond.

Too bad.. I actually really like bastardo, always have since he came up as a starter…

It’ll be interesting to see what happens but I think we should keep him long term, he’s a very good lefty reliever, though he’s wild sometimes, he’s effective… effectively wild lol…

As someone mentioned before this will benefit us in being able to see what our other young lefty relievers can do it given the opportunity in the show… it also might help us lose some more games and get us into the top 10 for the draft… optimism baby!!!

Not surprising. Remember two years ago when he had a 95 MPH fastball and set or nearly set a record of lowest opponent BA? He’s not even 30 yet, so there’s really no other explanation IMO for a 4-5 MPH dropoff on the fastball.

Just shows the young kids that cheating is ok, just a slap on the wrist. The fifty games without pay really don’t hurt these guys. Now if that was you or I, we’d be dead in the water financially, lose our job, and might even do a little time. Pathetic.

You know these things are all over the place, right? And that most of them are totally legal, if a little shady? I mean, check out this advertisement for one of them: http://i.imgur.com/7uiCMql.jpg

Ripped grandpa isn’t going to jail.

I’d also argue that losing 30% of your salary is a big deal, regardless of how much you make. Obviously it’s less of a deal for someone with a ton in career earnings like Braun or Rodriguez, but Bastardo is losing ~$432,000 in salary, which is 85% of what he made last year and ~16% of his career earnings to date. That’s got to hurt for a guy who probably structured his life around his salary.

EricL,
I understand that growth hormone and some lesser testosterone boosters are legal. I’m simply drawing an analogy. These types of PEDs are illegal in the MLB, just as steroids are in society. I was equating the two, not trying to equate the substance themselves, but the legality. Obviously, test boosters and the such are legal in the country. I also understand thirty percent of ones salary hurts, but when your making 400k still for throwing a ball, while integral positions in society rarely pay that much, only 2% make that, then for the other 90%+ of us working people who construct, engineer, move finances, teach children, heal people, etc. youre damn right it hurts. Spare me the pathos for these guys. Ryan Howard makes around 40k a game. It’s a travesty that we pay sports players and entertainers such exorbitant salaries. Shame on us for fueling it.

I’ll wait until anouncements are actually made before I condemn Bastardo.

It does look, though, like he cheated, and that would be plain disgusting.

I really don’t think any of this sets any kind of example. Cheaters are cheaters, honest people aren’t. What it does, though, is when a player puts up a few good years due to PEDs, he can gain a contract so large that any suspension is a drop in the bucket. Teams should have the option of cancelling later years of a long contract when a drug related suspension goes down in the early going.

” Teams should have the option of cancelling later years of a long contract when a drug related suspension goes down in the early going.”

I see where you’re coming from, but I think helps the team too much. Most contracts are are backloaded, so allowing a team to void a long term contract like that wouldn’t be fair.

If say the Yankees, sign a guy like Arod to a huge contract that’s likely to look really bad by the end of it, but provides great surplus value in the early years, allowing them to cancel said contract halfway through isn’t fair to the other 29 teams who (wisely) weren’t willing to give the guy so much money on the tail end of the contract. The team would have reaped all the rewards of the contract without having to face the inevitable consequence.

By allowing teams to cancel contracts, you’re arbitrarily picking winners; winners that were at least not doing enough to prevent steroid use in the first place.

Why do people side with the billionaire owners who steal money directly from their own pockets rather than the players who have to negotiate their salaries and have a career-life span of something like 10-15 years, and less on average?

You know that tax money is taken directly out of your pockets to pay for all the new stadia around baseball, and that your cable bill is artificially inflated each month because companies like Comcast and Fox have given billions of dollars to these owners, who give less and less to the players, right? I mean, player compensation as a percentage of baseball revenues is at a multi-decade low, and the lowest of all 4 major sports, while revenues across baseball franchises as a whole are at record highs.

Meanwhile Bastardo is linked to some shady clinic because he wants to throw a baseball a little better to help his team out and people want to send him to the gulag. This whole business of vilifying the players while ignoring the straight out theft the owners have been perpetuating on fans, and, worse, non-fan residents of cities in which they operate, is so strange to me.

I actually don’t think teams should get a break. I think that’s unfair to the other teams. I think they should have to pay the money into some kind of fund to help players stop this stuff. And they should still get charged toward their LT threshold.

If ARoid was given a lifetime suspension. do you realize the break that would be for the Yankees?

I put this “example” out somewhere the other day, might’ve been here, I can’t remember-
if Arod gets a lifetime ban for doing steroids, the Yankees could get total salary relief for it.

Ryan Howard doesn’t use, he’s just getting old and injured, and can’t contribute like he used to. He could use the juice to prolong his career but he doesn’t. The Phillies get NO salary relief.

So-
One guy cheats and his team gets a break, they can now spend all they want.
The other guy doesn’t but his team has to pay, and stay under the threshold.
Think about that-

I know they’d never do it, but it would be cool if the Phillies offered refund vouchers like the Brewers did. This season has been a train wreck, and the blame can be shared from top to bottom. At least there’s some comfort in knowing that RAJ (scientifically proven to be one of the best GMs in the sport) is working hard to make this team a force once again.

A little more on the quote front this morning from Pete Rose this morning, Wednesday, 2 days after the shoe finally fell after weeks of “suspense.” Pete informed us that A Rod should admit his mistakes. Sharing publicity with Rose was Denny McLain. McLain offered the opinion that Jhonny (shuddup, spellcheck, I spelled it right) Peralta was being selfish by taking his suspension now rather than at a time when it was better for the Tiger franchise.

That there probably isn’t a clearly right time to take any of these suspensions without an easy land on the devil’s advocate square is besides the point.

The point is that you aren’t gonna change the world, which marches to the beat of the media acting as though the public is attracted to fallen stars, the guilt shamed, those sort of folks.

But personally, I think such an approach is comical. I remember back in the day when cocaine was said to be floating around the bigs, and a name player was caught (not that he was alone) and he either did, or intended to do anti drug spots. The sham of that was just one person’s opinion, I’d have rather the message be conveyed by a player of similar magnitude who had never fallen to the peer pressure.

So I’m sure the names of Rose and McLain attracted many eyeballs, but to me, it is completely laughable that anyone would care what either of those 2 would have to say on the subject. At what point did either of those 2 develop qualifications on who should do what? Maybe on others playing skills as a baseball player, but that’s the limit. Either one would give you a nice glad hand and make you feel warm and fuzzy if you met them, and that’s okay, but there are limits to what they should be commenting on.